A Framework for Prioritizing the TESS Planetary Candidates Most Amenable to Atmospheric Characterization Eliza M.-R
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Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 130:114401 (14pp), 2018 November https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/aadf6f © 2018. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. A Framework for Prioritizing the TESS Planetary Candidates Most Amenable to Atmospheric Characterization Eliza M.-R. Kempton1,2 , Jacob L. Bean3 , Dana R. Louie1, Drake Deming1, Daniel D. B. Koll4, Megan Mansfield5, Jessie L. Christiansen6, Mercedes López-Morales7, Mark R. Swain8, Robert T. Zellem8, Sarah Ballard9,45, Thomas Barclay10,11, Joanna K. Barstow12, Natasha E. Batalha13, Thomas G. Beatty14,15, Zach Berta-Thompson16, Jayne Birkby17, Lars A. Buchhave18, David Charbonneau7, Nicolas B. Cowan19,20, Ian Crossfield9, Miguel de Val-Borro21,22, René Doyon23, Diana Dragomir9,46, Eric Gaidos24, Kevin Heng25, Renyu Hu8, Stephen R. Kane26, Laura Kreidberg7,27, Matthias Mallonn28, Caroline V. Morley29, Norio Narita30,31,32,33,34, Valerio Nascimbeni35, Enric Pallé34,36, Elisa V. Quintana10, Emily Rauscher37, Sara Seager38,39, Evgenya L. Shkolnik40, David K. Sing41, Alessandro Sozzetti42, Keivan G. Stassun43, Jeff A. Valenti13, and Carolina von Essen44 1 Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; [email protected] 2 Department of Physics, Grinnell College, 1116 8th Avenue, Grinnell, IA 50112, USA 3 Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 5640 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA 4 Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 5 Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 5734 S. Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637, USA 6 Caltech/IPAC-NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, MC 100-22 Pasadena CA 91125, USA 7 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 01238, USA 8 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA 9 Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 10 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA 11 University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Cir, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA 12 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University College London, London, UK 13 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA 14 Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802, USA 15 Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, The Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802, USA 16 Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA 17 Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands 18 DTU Space, National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark, Elektrovej 328, DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark 19 Department of Physics, McGill University, 3600 rue University, Montréal, QC, H3A 2T8, Canada 20 Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, McGill University, 3450 rue University, Montreal, QC, H3A 0E8, Canada 21 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Astrochemistry Laboratory, 8800 Greenbelt Road, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA 22 Department of Physics, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC 20064, USA 23 Institut de Recherche sur les Exoplanètes, Départment de Physique, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada 24 Department of Geology & Geophysics, University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 25 University of Bern, Center for Space and Habitability, Gesellschaftsstrasse 6, CH-3012, Bern, Switzerland 26 Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA 27 Harvard Society of Fellows 78 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 28 Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam, An der Sternwarte 16, D-14482 Potsdam, Germany 29 Department of Astronomy, Harvard University, 60 Garden St, Cambridge MA 02138, USA 30 Department of Astronomy, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan 31 JST, PRESTO, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan 32 Astrobiology Center, NINS, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan 33 National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, NINS, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8588, Japan 34 Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), E-38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain 35 Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, “G. Galilei”, Università degli Studi di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 3, I-35122 Padova, Italy 36 Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), E-38206, La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain 37 Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, 1085 S. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA 38 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 39 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA 40 School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA 41 Astrophysics Group, Physics Building, Stocker Road, University of Exeter, Devon EX4 4QL, UK 42 INAF—Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, Via Osservatorio 20, I-10025 Pino Torinese, Italy 43 Vanderbilt University, Department of Physics & Astronomy, 6301 Stevenson Center Lane, Nashville, TN 37235, USA 44 Stellar Astrophysics Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark Received 2018 May 6; accepted 2018 September 6; published 2018 September 27 45 MIT Torres Fellow for Exoplanetary Science. 46 NASA Hubble Fellow. 1 Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 130:114401 (14pp), 2018 November Kempton et al. Abstract A key legacy of the recently launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission will be to provide the astronomical community with many of the best transiting exoplanet targets for atmospheric characterization. However, time is of the essence to take full advantage of this opportunity. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST),although delayed, will still complete its nominal five year mission on a timeline that motivates rapid identification, confirmation, and mass measurement of the top atmospheric characterization targets from TESS.BeyondJWST, future dedicated missions for atmospheric studies such as the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL) require the discovery and confirmation of several hundred additional sub-Jovian size planets (Rp<10 R⊕) orbiting bright stars, beyond those known today, to ensure a successful statistical census of exoplanet atmospheres. Ground- based extremely large telescopes (ELTs) will also contribute to surveying the atmospheres of the transiting planets discovered by TESS. Here we present a set of two straightforward analytic metrics, quantifying the expected signal-to- noise in transmission and thermal emission spectroscopy for a given planet, that will allow the top atmospheric characterization targets to be readily identified among the TESS planet candidates. Targets that meet our proposed threshold values for these metrics would be encouraged for rapid follow-up and confirmation via radial velocity mass measurements. Based on the catalog of simulated TESS detections by Sullivan et al., we determine appropriate cutoff values of the metrics, such that the TESS mission will ultimately yield a sample of ∼300 high-quality atmospheric characterization targets across a range of planet size bins, extending down to Earth-size, potentially habitable worlds. Key words: planets and satellites: atmospheres – planets and satellites: detection Online material: color figures 1. Introduction Figure 1 shows the known transiting exoplanets that are favorable targets for atmospheric characterization based on The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is poised their expected S/N for transmission spectroscopy.51 While to revolutionize the exoplanet field by completing the census of there are a substantial number of giants that are good targets, close-in transiting planets orbiting the nearest stars (Ricker there are very few known planets smaller than 10 R⊕ that are et al. 2015). The planets discovered by TESS will be among the suitable for this type of atmospheric study. The atmospheric best targets for atmospheric characterization, owing to the large characterization community has the ambition to use JWST and signal-to-noise (S/N) obtainable based on the brightness and the ELTs to characterize many tens of planets, including a push relatively small sizes of their host stars. Most notably, TESS is toward temperate and rocky worlds (Snellen et al. 2013; Rodler designed to detect many hundreds of sub-Jovian size planets & López-Morales 2014; Cowan et al. 2015). Furthermore, that are substantially better atmospheric characterization targets hundreds of planets over a wide range of masses and radii will than those detected by the Kepler satellite (e.g., Thompson ultimately be needed for future dedicated exoplanet atmosphere et al. 2018). The atmospheric characterization studies enabled missions like the recently selected Atmospheric Remote-sensing by the TESS mission will round out our understanding of Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey (ARIEL) concept (Tinetti exoplanet atmospheres in the Neptune- down to Earth-size et al. 2016; see Section 2 for more